1,720,985 research outputs found
Towards an extension of 'de se' / 'de re' ambiguities: person features and reflexivization
No full textIn this contribution we argue in favor of a morphosyntactic analysis of the DE RE / DE SE ambiguity, based on the opposition between interpreted and non-interpreted 3-person features (as realized on pronouns). More specifically, we contend that non-interpreted person features encode, by means of a mechanism of thematic feature inheritance, the semantic properties typically encoded by interpreted 1-person features. The proposed analysis allows an extension of the DE RE / DE SE ambiguity to linguistic contexts that do not involve verbs of propositional attitude, such as reflexive constructions. Finally, elaborating on Reinhart and Siloni’s (2003) proposal that
reflexivization operations may apply either in syntax or in the lexicon, we demonstrate how the interpretive properties of inherently reflexive predicates can be formalized cross-linguisticall
A Case for Phenomenal Experience in Natural Language
No full textModel-theoretic semantics is grounded on the assumption that meaning is reference. In such a framework, defining the meaning of a natural language expression corresponds to defining the object to which it refers,
a practice sometimes referred to as ‘Natural Language Metaphysics’. Typical objects of reference used in semantic modeling are individual entities and possible worlds. A number of linguistic facts have been explained by introducing novel classes of entities in the model. Relevant examples are times and events. In this contribution, we aim at producing a case for introducing phenomenal experiences among the set of objects
natural language expressions refer to. We show that the truth conditions of some natural language expressions are best described as denoting phenomenal experiences, rather than objects of the world
Person features and pronominal anaphora
No full textThis contribution aims at clarifying the role of Person at the interface between syntax and the interpretive systems. We argue that first-person interpretations of third-person pronouns (de se readings) stem from the option of leaving the referential index underspecified on the pronoun, thus accounting for the interplay of this phenomenon with the anaphoric usage of first-person indexicals (pronoun-shifting) and logophoric pronouns. The results include proposals on the connection between the semantics of first-person and the syntax of the left-periphery, a neo-Davidsonian treatment of the semantics of first-person indexicals, and a novel view of pronominal anaphora according to which Higginbotham’s asymmetric relation of ‘linking’ involves a mechanism of thematic role inheritance tied to the semantics of first-perso
Italian echo-questions at the interface
No full textThis paper investigates the prosodic, semantic and syntactic properties of fronted wh-echo questions (FWhEQs) in Italian, comparing them to information seeking wh-questions (WhQs). Results from a production experiment showed that the two differ prosodically: FWhEQs start low, rise later (the pitch accent was realized on the verb participle) and end with a high boundary tone, whereas WhQs in most of the cases start with a rise, followed by a small plateau and end with a rise or a low F0. At the syntactic level we argue that a FWhEQ moves as a whole to the specifier of a TopicP within a higher superordinate ForceP. At the semantic level, we propose that FWhEQs differ from regular WhQs in that they express a meta speech act: with a FWhEQ the speaker asks the addressee to repeat an assertion. We formalize this idea arguing that the movement of the whole ForceP to a higher ForceP, together with the obligatory final rising intonation, activates a REQUEST operator in the superordinate ForceP. The REQUEST operator is a meta speech act as it applies to another speech act, rather than to a sentence radical
Syntactic gradients in compounding: Bemba associative nominals vs. prepositional and deverbal compounds
No full textIn this article we compare three classes of nominal constructions: Bemba so-called ‘associative nominals’, a class of nominal constructions found in several Bantu languages (though we will essentially concentrate
on Bemba), Italian so-called ‘prepositional compounds’ (or ‘phrasal compounds’), a class of nominal constructions common to other Romance languages (such as French and Spanish), and a specific class of prepositionless deverbal compounds that is peculiar to Italian and is not found in the other Romance languages
Syntactic gradients in compounding: Bemba associative nominals vs. Italian prepositional and deverbal compounds
No full textThis contribution discusses some similarities between Romance prepositional compounds and Bemba (Bantu) so-called associative nominals. It also discusses potential similarities between the verbal nominals in Italian and associative nominals in Bemb
The Semantic Properties of Free Indirect Discourse
No full textFree indirect discourse has traditionally been described as a form of reported speech or thought. It seems to be a mixture of both direct discourse (in allowing exclamatives, interrogatives, etc.) and indirect discourse (in following sequences of tenses and pronouns). It has been the object of more interest from literary theorists than from linguists, though Banfield (1982) offered what is still the best syntactic description of the phenomenon, and contemporary semantic accounts have brought new insights into it. Schlenker (2004) made decisive progress in proposing an account of two contexts and indexical shifting. Maier (2015) proposes an alternative quotational analyses, which Eckardt (2015) rejects, going back to Schlenker’s model, suitably amended to answer Maier’s criticism. We present these theories, criticize them, and propose an extension of the Schlenker–Eckardt mode
The syntactic and semantic properties of Free Indirect Discourse
No full textFree indirect discourse has traditionally been described as a form of reported speech or thought. It seems to be a mixture of both direct discourse (in allowing exclamatives, interrogatives, etc.) and indirect discourse (in following sequences of tenses and pronouns). It has been the object of more interest from literary theorists than from linguists, though Banfield (1982) offered what is still the best syntactic description of the phenomenon, and contemporary semantic accounts have brought new insights into it. Schlenker (2004) made decisive progress in proposing an account of two contexts and indexical shifting. Maier (2015) proposes an alternative quotational analyses, which Eckardt (2015) rejects, going back to Schlenker's model, suitably amended to answer Maier's criticism. We present these theories, criticize them, and propose an extension of the Schlenker–Eckardt model
A perspective-based account of the imperfective paradox
No full textKazanina and Phillips (Cognition (2007) 105:65−102) distinguish two accounts of the progressive and imperfective: the ‘perspective-based’ approach and the ‘event-based’ approach. The event-based approach maintains that imperfective and perfective refer to different classes of events. The perspective-based approach maintains that imperfective and perfective encode different perspectives towards otherwise ontologically and metaphysically equivalent events. The event-based approach is preferable over the perspective-based approach because it accounts for the imperfective paradox, that is, for the fact that imperfective and progressive morphology make it possible to use a telic predicate like ‘drive to Bordeaux’, which is defined by its endpoint, reaching Bordeaux, to describe an event that is only a partial event of driving to Bordeaux. The perspective-based approach, on the other hand, is supported by experimental findings on the acquisition of the meaning of the imperfective. In this article, we propose an alternative approach to the progressive/imperfective that can account both for the imperfective paradox and the experimental findings. The proposal is based on two main ideas: (i) as in the perspective-based approach, the role of the progressive and imperfective is to present events from an internal perspective, whereas the role of the perfective is to present events from an external perspective; (ii) progressive and imperfective sentences involve quantification over inertia worlds, as in the modal variant of the event-based approach; however, the modal import of progressive sentences is not brought about by the progressive operator, but is a property of telic predicates themselves
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